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85 rx headgasket question.. maybe the turbo instead??


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alright heres the skinny on it..

 

was drivin along, car started missing a little.. no overheating, nothing.. other than the miss it was normal..

 

i let it sit for a few hours, and started it and now its blowin water out the tailpipe....

 

i thought originally a headgasket took a dookie..

 

now thinking about it, is it possible the turbo is sucking the water and blowin it out the pipe? maybe the turbo took a dookie instead?

 

i'm not real keen on turbo's so i don't fully understand if they could do that or not..

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not likely to be a bad turbo. it would have to rust through the housing or crack internaly.

I would suspect head gasket.

To find out pull plugs and check to see if coolant steam cleaned all the cylinders or just one or two. turbo leakage would be in all 4.

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Have you run the engine with the radiator cap off, radiator full and watched for bubbles? If it is a head gasket, there should be bubbles, if there are no bubbles, it MIGHT be the turbo, but I have never seen a turbo water jacket go bad. But that is not saying that it couldn't.

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on my turbo build, one of my heads was questionable with a crack in the exhaust port. when i started the car in the morning, i would get a little steam, and some coolant smell, as water must have leaked out into the crosspipe overnite.

 

if you have the heads off, or at least the cross pipe, look for cracks in the exhaust ports

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Meeky Moose,

 

Do your self or someone else a favor and don't let that block sit with coolant in the cylinders for long.

 

I just bought a motor with what turned out to be a bad turbo leaking coolant. The cylinder bores were so pitted by rust I am getting .5mm bored. Coolant is suposed to stop corrosion, but I 'm not sure I buy that.

 

Maybe just some oil or wd-40 in the spark plug holes will preserve to corpse for a future rebuilder

 

garner

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ahh yeha, got that one covered.. its only sat for about a month.. started her up and moved it yesterday.. as soon as it comes out i'm tearin her down and tossing that gen1 head on the drivers side..

 

i got 2 ea82T's sittin here for parts.. the 3rd will go in my rx.. so plan is to take the 2 of them and rebuild a "hopped up" ea82T for the RX.. then keep stock engine #3 for a spare.. i figure cams, port and polish, balanced bottom end, forged pistons, and maybe a few other things..

 

i know what ya mean by rust.. got a block for a friend for his jeep (4.0) it sat so long he had to have it bored .30 over to get it all out.. head was unusable.. amazingly though the cam was perfect.. looked new..

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